7/29/2018

The long run getting The Manse ready to sell is coming to a close. All of the painting has been completed with one small exception, and that will be done later this week. All of the interior renovations are complete so all that’s left is a top to bottom cleaning, some staging work (curtains, throws, a few pillows, and a couple of runners), and packing up anything we won’t need until ensconced in The New Manse.

The realtor will be by to take photos once everything is staged and we’ll then be on the market!

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I came across a great YouTube channel for those of you interested in guns, interactions with police, how to properly carry concealed, firearms training, and general Second Amendment issues. It’s called Mike the Cop and he has a great series of videos that I have been enjoying over the past week or so.

Check him out.

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It appears that he and his underling oligarchs are more interested in “getting theirs” rather than actually doing their jobs and helping the people of New York City. Between that and the Comrade Mayor doing his best to handcuff the NYPD and bring NYC back to the Bad Old Days of the 1970’s.

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Considering the damage he did to this country, between his disastrous domestic policy, the economic pain he caused due to his incompetence, his disjointed foreign policy that insulted and disrespected our allies and sucked up to our enemies, he was easily the worst president in US history. And somewhere, Jimmy Carter is celebrating, chanting “I’m Number Two! I’m Number Two!”

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This week, a vandal destroyed President Trump’s star on the Hollywood “Walk of Fame.” Thursday night, Elijah Schaffer and Joy Villa were recording a video at the site (Schaffer hosts a YouTube channel called “Slightly Offensive”) when they were surrounded by an angry mob of Democrat thugs. Being a Republican is more or less considered a “hate crime” nowadays in California, and Schaffer was wearing a red-white-and-blue Trump jersey. The mob started chanting “F–k Donald Trump” and — because they’re Democrats, and therefore thieves — one of the thugs stole a $3,000 camera from Schaffer’s crew. This led to a brawl and police are now looking for two suspects.

At this rate I have a feeling that California will devolve into mob rule not unlike the Reign of Terror after the French Revolution.

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If anyone tries to convince you that renewables generate cheap electricity and are the wave of the future, point them to this post at Jo Nova that shows that just the opposite is true, at least in Australia.

Of course I would expect our home grown renewable fanatics will make the claim that “It won’t happen here because we’ll do it better”. But unlike them, most of us know that won’t be the case. It will be no different than what Australia has experienced. It will also be the same as what Germany has experienced, that being exponentially increasing electric rates, higher dependence upon non-green electricity sources because the renewable energy is not dispatchable and woefully unpredictable.

Excuse me? How are they going to do that, forced relocation of minorities into those states? It almost seems (to me) that’s what they’re advocating. I’m sure that will go over well with the folks being relocated.

How is that not racist?

In a truly diverse world, we look up to actions and ideas with an eye toward that old saw “judge them by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.”

The Diversity movement doesn’t work that way. The colorblind world is all about color. It’s about numbers. Butts in seats, or in front of classrooms, or at our workplaces.

What about Live Free or Die?

In a genuinely free society, people go where they want for reasons that are their own.

And in a truly diverse world personal preference would drive demographics and that would be good enough. Sorry, say the “experts,” it’s not.

“What, we’re going to get a new home? Really? Where? New Hampshire? Are you effin’ kidding me? It’s goddamn cold up there! Why the hell would we want to go there? We like it right here where we are! What do you mean we don’t have a choice? Oh, we do? We can choose where we’re going to go? Great! What are our choices? Wait, what? New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine? That’s it? What the f**k?!!! That isn’t any better! Why the hell are you doing this to us? What did we ever do to you? Diversity? F**k diversity! We ain’t goin’ nowhere!!”

Yeah, that’ll work.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the weather has become more pleasant, the work on The Manse is almost done, and where once again I am looking forward to going into work so I can get some rest.

7/22/2018

The rains arrived with a vengeance this morning. Not that I minded its arrival. We’ve needed the rain as it’s been rather dry here the past month. However the rain brought all work outside The Manse to a halt.

There’s still some painting and repairs to complete before The Manse goes on the market and we really didn’t need yet another delay. We are already three weeks behind schedule and the ‘hot market’ window will be closing when school starts late next month.

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With the ongoing debate about energy, specifically the means of generating electricity, the push seems to be for expanding renewables in favor of other more traditional technologies like oil, coal, natural gas, and particularly nuclear.

While renewables sound appealing, the reality is that they aren’t all that great (with the exception of hydro), particularly when you look at the costs. The cost of maintaining the renewables like wind and solar is much higher than originally forecast and their service lifetime is shorter. Because of the intermittent nature such renewables, meaning they cannot be counted on to generate power at any specific time, something that makes them non-dispatchable. The rest of the system has to adjust to the variable nature of renewable sources, making the system less stable.

Another downside to renewables – subsidies.

While many utilities receive subsidies of one form or another, renewables cannot exist without them. The others can, even nuclear. (Yes, the federal government heavily underwrites the storage/disposal of spent nuclear fuel, but that’s under federal non-proliferation laws.)

While a number of companies have been working on next generation reactors, many which have yet to build their first prototypes, Elysium is building upon already proven molten salt technology using materials that are already nuclear qualified. While it is taking a slightly different path in regards to the molten salt, preferring to use chloride salts rather than the fluoride salts of other reactor. As molten salt thorium reactors have a number of advantages over uranium/plutonium reactors, I think it is time that we make the move in this direction.

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Why doesn’t this surprise me?

If you have the misfortune to be a young Republican in Washington, DC, or worse, a Trump staffer, the dating scene is all but non-existent. Considering the atmosphere in the District, particularly after eight years of the Obama Administration and the entrenched Deep State it left behind, that Republicans are in effect social outcasts is to be expected. After all, they are not of the proper political ideology and do not live within the constantly shifting confines of the Left’s paradigm. They are the untermenschen of Washington, to be devoutly ignored, minimalized, and disparaged.

Yet another gleaming example of the intolerant Tolerant Left.

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After the Supreme Court decision that allows states to collect sales taxes from other states where their residents make Internet purchases, one has to think that the 45 states that do have sales taxes expected the revenues to start rolling in once they enacted legislation to collect them. However they may find that a few states, particularly those 5 states that have no sales tax of their own may balk at collecting them for the states that do. That’s certainly the case with my home state of New Hampshire.

While New Hampshire doesn’t like the idea of collecting revenue for other states (and there has been a NH Supreme Court decision – Town Faire Tire vs. Massachusetts Department of Revenue Administration - that have stated that New Hampshire doesn’t have to), it may be forced to do so. However that won’t come without a cost for those states demanding our state do so.

Since New Hampshire does not have a system in place for collecting sales taxes, retailers will have to invest time and money to install the software in their systems to do so as well as pay for the constant updates that will be required to keep the tax requirements up to date. So what plan does the state legislature and the governor have in mind to deal with this?

How many states will want to go through all of that to collect what will in the end be less than what they think they will get? (I expect that California, Illinois, and Connecticut will do so because they desperately need the revenue. And maybe New Jersey. Of course there will be many different sales tax rates in some states, between the state, county, and municipal sales taxes that exist that have imposed.)

As one commenter to the linked post suggested, “Ironically, my fee, for administration and management of your taxes, is the EXACT amount of your taxes...PLUS postage.”

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I haven’t quite figured out the math, but so far no one has been able to explain to me how it is that having more than one job lowers the unemployment rate. Does the Department of Labor automatically assume that one job filled equates to one person? Or do they look at how many people are looking for work versus how many people have jobs?

Senator Elizabeth Warren seems to think that all of the real reason the unemployment rate is so low is because everyone is working more than one job. This is a similar point that Congressional hopeful Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has brought up as well. What makes it worse is that she has a degree in economics and should know better. But she’s pushing the Progressive narrative and purposely ignoring real world economics as a means of gaining elective office.

To this point I haven’t seen where having more than one job affects the unemployment rate. Using Warren’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s reasoning, we could have a theoretical unemployment rate in the negative numbers if everyone capable of working had more than one job. The labor participation rate could exceed 100% under that same reasoning.

Does anyone else see a problem with this?

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The blue Colorado mug, part of the coffee giant’s “Been There” series touting the distinctive features of U.S. states and cities, included drawings of bighorn sheep, pine trees, mountains, skiers — and a drilling rig.

Losing their minds over a friggin’ coffee mug? These folks need to get a life.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the rains have arrived for the next couple of days, all outside work has come to a halt, and where once again I look forward to Monday because it means I can get some rest at work.

7/15/2018

Another weekend winds to close, meaning that the work I’ve been doing to prep The Manse for sale is slacking off. Work intrudes on doing the work that remains. Little will be done tomorrow due to other commitments and Tuesday looks doubtful as thunderstorms are forecast for the afternoon, meaning any work to be done after work is likely to be pre-empted by Mother Nature.

Isn’t that always the way?

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It doesn’t surprise me if this is indeed the case. After all, things like engineering “is only for those who enjoy “rote” work. Engineering is not creative. There’s only one right answer. You’ll live your life in a cubicle. It’s dehumanizing. You’ll never talk to anyone. And, of course, it’s sexist. All this from professors whose only substantive experience with STEM is a forced march through a single statistics course in college, if that.”

I find it amusing that some of these professors seem to think that engineering has “only one right answer”. Not in my 40-some years of engineering it doesn’t. What a lame claim.

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It seems like damned near every relationship I’ve been in, the woman felt like I could be improved on. I never could understand that s**t – you got together because you like each other, but after you get together you find out that you’re basically just the rough draft. Sure, there’s always something about the other person that you don’t care for, but with guys it’s different. Sometimes we just accept the fact that that’s the way that particular woman is and hey! accept her for who she is. Other times we just figure it ain’t worth the f**king time and effort so we just deal with it. If she blows monster farts right before she wakes up, get up before she does. That’s dealing with it.

I’ve been involved with a few women like that and the relationships didn’t last as it was quite apparent to me that weren’t really interested in me as I was. They wanted to turn me into someone else, someone that was nothing like the real me and that wasn’t going to happen.

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With their ‘layers and layers of fact-checkers’, you’d think that could have got this one right, wouldn’t you? But then again, it doesn’t fit the Progressive narrative so the facts must be ignored and the hit piece on Nikki Haley must be published. Too bad it backfired on them…again.

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See what happens in the real world when Progressives run cities? In case you didn’t know, nothing good. Between rising crime rates, shootings, feces in the streets, increasing numbers of the homeless, decaying schools, and rising taxes, endless examples show us that the Blue Model just doesn’t work.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where summer continues apace, NASCAR returns next weekend, and where Monday is getting here none too soon. (I need to rest!)

7/08/2018

It’s nice to have a decent bout of weather, with the high temps and humidity being replaced with temps in the 70’s and dew points in the low 50’s. It’s made for much better weather for working outside The Manse in preparation for putting the place on the market.

All kinds of outside work is easier when you don’t have to worry about heat stroke. Painting is easier without worrying about sweat dripping on the wet paint.

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Between all of the hate directed against Trump and his staffers, intolerance towards Trump supporters including attacks against minors, fake news propagated by a major news organization (AP), Democrats trying very hard to make good economic news appear to be awful along with their promises to raise taxes, re-impose taxes and regulations done away with by Trump, open the borders, impose sanctions on anyone and everyone disagreeing with them, is it any wonder people are turning away from the Democrat party and joining the #WalkAway movement?

It appears the DNC is doing everything it can to make sure it will lose the mid-term elections. Of course I expect they’ll be trying to figure out what happened and will crank up the rhetoric and calls for confrontation and violence against anyone not supporting them. And should that happen I expect there will be bloodshed and it will be their ‘supporters’ committing it. Then, of course, they will decry the actions of those who defend themselves by wounding or killing their assailants.

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We’ve seen more than enough socialist economic systems to know that they just don’t work. Such a highly controlled economic system has one major flaw and it always has – it short circuits all of the market feedback systems and the economy doesn’t respond to the needs of the consumers. Shortages of needed goods become a constant experience. Even if those goods are available their quality will be low. “Standing on line” will become an everyday experience…except for the governmental elite. They will not be standing in line for anything. They will have access to goods and services that everyone else cannot get.

Socialist economic systems could work, but only one way: keep the damn people out of it. If everything were controlled by an AI it might work. But once people get involved in controlling any aspect of the economic system it will deteriorate and become highly dysfunctional.

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The perpetrator has been in Canada for 3 years. He understands the laws there. But because he is from Syria he gets a free pass? I have a feeling that if tried something like that someplace like Texas he’d either be convicted, or assuming he didn’t get dead by the actions of one of the parents of his victims. (“Why did you shoot the victim 17 times?” “Well, your honor, he just plain needed killin’.” “Oh, why the heck didn’t you just say so? Case dismissed!”)

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How many other nations have managed to even come close to matching the US in lowering their CO2 emissions? Let’s take a count, shall we?

Hmm. Nope, not that one…or that one.

Ahh, here we are!

None. Not one. NOT. ONE.

We could do even better if we decided to go whole hog for nuclear power, specifically the Third or Fourth Generation plants. If we can get thorium reactors online we’d have all of the energy we would ever need, wouldn’t have to use up large tracts of land for solar or wind, could get rid of all of the existing nuclear fuel waste, build small modular reactors (which lowers costs) and cluster them together rather than building One Big Reactor, and make our power generation system more dispersed. Then the only need we’d have for natural gas-fired power plants would be as ‘peaker’ plants, power plants used to hand peak demands. (Nuclear plants don’t throttle up and down very quickly. Gas plants can be brought on and off line quickly, hence their use as peaker plants.) Our CO2 emissions could be reduced by an even greater extent.

Of course I expect the ‘usual suspects’ to discount the decrease in the US emissions and find some way to blame other nation’s failures to reduce their emissions on us.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the summerfolk up for the Fourth of July holiday have headed home, the lake has calmed, and where I’m glad Monday is arriving so I can get some rest.

7/01/2018

We are in the second day of a forecast 8-day long heat wave, with temps today in the 90’s and the heat index around 100°F. Work around The Manse has been curtailed a bit with the bulk of it taking place in the morning before it gets too hot…for the most part.

I have been refinishing the three decks and front steps, working on them when they are being shaded by The Manse. That has meant working on them until 2PM or so.

The weather has also lent itself to late day trips out onto the lake in the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout over the past three days. I expect to hit the lake after work tomorrow before heading home. (Needless to say, The Boat has been used quite a bit since Memorial Day and I’ve gone through three tanks of gas - about 90 gallons - since then. It hasn’t been sitting idle at the dock for days on end.

Most socialists tend to be insulated from the effects of their ideology, having the money and ‘pull’ to distance themselves from having to live the lifestyle of the proletariat. It’s why they push so hard for socialism because it will only affect those ‘beneath’ them.

I think if they knew they would be obliged to live the same ways as the proles they would abandon the idea of socialism and distance themselves from it as far as possible.

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Apparently not everyone is enamored of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. A former co-worker has less than kind things to say about her and her work ethic. She appeared to show her true colors in regards to her belief that what’s hers is hers and what’s yours is negotiable, just like a true socialist.

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How many potential Ronald Reagans have found that, like him, they didn’t leave the Democrat Party so much as it left them? What will this mean for the DNC going forward, particularly if the minority voters they have always counted on turn their backs on them because they no longer represent their interests and beliefs?

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The idea that women are programmed by the patriarchy to agree to sex even when they don’t want to is not a novel concept among modern feminists. The 2017 viral New Yorkerstory “Cat Person” dealt with this issue, as havenumerous advice columns and women’s magazines. How is it possible, though, that the generation of women’s sexual empowerment is the generation most in need of this advice?

Perhaps their expectations are too high, particularly in light of the “modern feminist expectations for their sexual encounters.”

If I had to guess, those ‘expectations’ are unrealistic.

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They cannot tell us what defines an assault rifle (other than they are ‘scary looking guns’), do not understand the difference between clips and magazines, do not understand the difference between semi-automatic and fully automatic weapons, and haven’t a clue about how a shotgun works or its limitations. It seems all of their knowledge is based upon what they see in the movies, much of which tends to violate a few laws of physics, and inaccurately portrays how easy it is to hit a target, particularly when said target is moving.

But we know that none of that will stop them from ‘reporting’ about how bad guns are while ignoring the person wielding them.

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It is something that has been known for some time but dutifully ignored by proponents of wind power. After all, negative health effects of a renewable energy source doesn’t fit the narrative. Therefore there can be no negative effects of wind turbines, even if there are.

One has to wonder where Trump’s promises to ‘make the trains run on time’ were in his platform. I certainly haven’t been able to find it.

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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the hot weather has settled in, the summerfolk are keeping cool, and where going to work on Monday gives me a chance to rest in air-conditioned comfort.